Macmillan has agreed to other sales restrictions, including a prohibition until December 2014 on entering into new discounting agreements for e-book titles. As others who have agreed to similar settlements, Macmillan must regularly report to the DOJ on future e-book ventures and any communications it has with its rivals.

“As a result of today’s settlement, Macmillan has agreed to immediately allow retailers to lower the prices consumers pay for Macmillan’s e-books,” said Jamillia Ferris, chief of staff and counsel at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, in a statement. “Just as consumers are already paying lower prices for the e-book versions of many of Hachette’s, HarperCollins’ and Simon & Schuster’s new releases and bestsellers, we expect the prices of many of Macmillan’s e-books will also decline.”

The DOJ still has an ongoing case against Apple—a trial date has been set for June 2013.

Why did Macmillan hold out for so long? In a letter posted (PDF) to the company’s website on Friday, John Sargent, the company’s CEO, wrote that the settlement’s e-book discounting “would be harmful to the industry,” and after all the others had capitulated to the DOJ, “our business would have a pricing disadvantage for two years.”

Further, Sargent insists the company was in the right all along.

“I had an old fashioned belief that you should not settle if you have done no wrong,” he wrote. “As it turns out, that is indeed old fashioned. Our company is not large enough to risk a worst-case judgment. In this action the government accused five publishers and Apple of conspiring to raise prices. As each publisher settled, the remaining defendants became responsible not only for their own treble damages, but also possibly for the treble damages of the settling publishers (minus what they settled for). A few weeks ago I got an estimate of the maximum possible damage figure. I cannot share the breathtaking amount with you, but it was much more than the entire equity of our company.”

QQ. "We got caught trying to fix prices, and you wouldn't believe the damages they wanted to force us to pay!"

If it means I can finally buy a book on my Kindle for less than the cost (or, often, 50% extra) of buying a physical copy which I could then lend, sell, and which has to be made and shipped to me - well, that seems like a good thing...

I always enjoy these statements from the CEOs afterwards. What, do you think they're just going to say, "Shucks, we were caught with our hand in the cookie jar"? No, you're going to get some "yeah well, we were right but gummint blah blah blah sniff snif..." nonsense.

I love the whole, "I don't believe in settling if we aren't wrong" followed up by a, "we couldn't risk taking the damages." If you weren't wrong, you would not have to worry about the damages. The fact that you were concerned about potential damages means that you were definitely aware that you could be found guilty.

If these book publishers were not guility of SOMETHING they would not have settled with Justice.

You better believe if there is evidence that proves Apple is guility of what they are acused of, these publishers as part of their agreement, have shared that information.

Everyone thought Justice was wrong to go after these publishers and Apple, yet they if its so wrong, why are they not fighting it? They certainly could afford to lose, at least that way, they could appeal the decision.

It's no secret that book publishers are having a hard time, just like the recording industry before it. This was a last ditch effort to squeeze as much money out of e-publishing as they could. And I believe that it was fear driven as a result of not knowing what the profits were going to be on e-books.

To me e-books should be a profitable medium for the publishers. After all, you certainly loose the bulk of overhead with things like printing and physical distribution. Sure what they did was wrong and they should be punished accordingly. If some go out of business as a result of their crimes, then so be it. E-books, for the publishers that embrace it, should be an excellent business model.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. They don't have a government granted monopoly. They have a government granted right not to have people copy their products. Most definitely not the same thing.

This isn't a case where "we" should be able to tell a business what to charge for its product, this is a case where "we" get to tell businesses that they cannot conspire to agree prices amoungst themselves, sign up deals preventing distributors from setting their own prices, and otherwise distort the free market.

Well, any DRM and restrictions immediatly gets removed from any e-books I purchase so I have no problem with it.

As long as you can purchase it in the first place.

If some region nonsense prevents me from buying a book then off to TPB I go. Hell, I eventually decided to pony up the (absurd) World War Z ebook price the other day, only to discover they had actually removed it from my local store and so I couldn't buy it even though I now wanted to... No prizes for guessing how that worked out for them.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Wait, what? Are you trying to say they should give away books for free?

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. They don't have a government granted monopoly. They have a government granted right not to have people copy their products. Most definitely not the same thing.

This isn't a case where "we" should be able to tell a business what to charge for its product, this is a case where "we" get to tell businesses that they cannot conspire to agree prices amoungst themselves, sign up deals preventing distributors from setting their own prices, and otherwise distort the free market.

Exactly.

This deal is great for US citizens, it means our government is actually serious about protecting consumer rights. I'd really like to see an analysis of who got the better deal, the US DOJ or the EU.

I know some of you are expecting Apple to get hit next, but from what I remember of the music side of things Apple was the one trying to hold out for .99 when others wanted higher prices. I'm thinking its possible that Apple was the one in the conversation trying to get prices comparable or lower than physical copies. Of course thats all speculation and they may wind up being the worst of the lot when its all over and done with.

Yay, I've been eying some books from Tor Books(part of Macmillan) for a while and they don't have a reasonable price for the e-books that I want to get (Same price as physical copies) with the constant "This price was set by the publisher" on Amazon.

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. They don't have a government granted monopoly. They have a government granted right not to have people copy their products. Most definitely not the same thing.

How is right to be the sole distributor of a work not a monopoly on distribution?

If some region nonsense prevents me from buying a book then off to TPB I go. Hell, I eventually decided to pony up the (absurd) World War Z ebook price the other day, only to discover they had actually removed it from my local store and so I couldn't buy it even though I now wanted to... No prizes for guessing how that worked out for them.

If only TPB had better coverage, like it does for everything else. It often takes hours of searching various sites to find a particular book, if it even exists.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

I hate to point this out, but its actually not nuts at all. People purchase books because they want to read them; thus, the value to the customer stays the same (if not goes up) from an eBook. Ergo, charging the same price is actually entirely logical from the standpoint of "Its the same thing, it gives them what they want, and they were willing to pay for it before".

How is right to be the sole distributor of a work not a monopoly on distribution?

My father is the sole distributor of Rotary hoists in his province (in Canada). That doesn't mean he has a monopoly, because there are like 10 other hoist brands customers could choose over his.

If your father is the sole distributor of a specific brant of hoist, then it's perfectly reasonable to say that he's got a monopoly on distribution of that brand of hoist. That the monopoly is limited does not make it less of a monopoly.

While I think that this point is important to understanding copyrights (i.e. I think that they are distribution monopolies rather than a representation of any sort of intrinsic property right), I don't think that this is particularly important to the case against Macmillan, or the rest of pappypappypappy's post.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

I hate to point this out, but its actually not nuts at all. People purchase books because they want to read them; thus, the value to the customer stays the same (if not goes up) from an eBook. Ergo, charging the same price is actually entirely logical from the standpoint of "Its the same thing, it gives them what they want, and they were willing to pay for it before".

And yet, customers claim that ebooks have less value to them, because they cannot be lent or resold.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

I hate to point this out, but its actually not nuts at all. People purchase books because they want to read them; thus, the value to the customer stays the same (if not goes up) from an eBook. Ergo, charging the same price is actually entirely logical from the standpoint of "Its the same thing, it gives them what they want, and they were willing to pay for it before".

And yet, customers claim that ebooks have less value to them, because they cannot be lent or resold.

Are they liars?

Plus the only reason they have been paying these prices is because the publishers colluded to set the prices, effectively negating any market-driven pricing.

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. They don't have a government granted monopoly. They have a government granted right not to have people copy their products. Most definitely not the same thing.

How is right to be the sole distributor of a work not a monopoly on distribution?

Because that's the basis of any free market system. If you are the owner of something, you get to decide who to sell it to and at what price. The missing piece here is that copyright applies to intangibles - and effectively prevents others from "taking" (let's not get hung up on that word, I begs...) your product and selling it themselves.

Basically, I don't think that the man on the Clapham omnibus sees the creator of a work being the only one allowed to sell it as being a monopoly. Here the issue wasn't MM's ability to set their own prices, but their demands that (a) they had some right to set prices for the people they sold to and (b) conspiracy to price fix across most of the market.

Publishers relieve themselves of Printing costs, Web Presses, much of the cost of distribution, no ongoing expenses for paper, covers, 3-color printing, ink, labor costs, etc, etc, etc, yet wish to continue to charge the same amount for eBooks as for hard-copies; while at the same time, holding authors to outdated contracts left-over from the age of dinosaurs.

Are these guys NUTS? Do they not understand that consumers have calculators? Really?

They aren't nuts. They have a government granted monopoly (Copyright), they're allowed to dick over consumers as much as they want. Consumers may stop purchasing the books eventually, but with textbooks you often don't have a lot of options, especially if they discontinue the print editions.

Wait, what? Are you trying to say they should give away books for free?

You never went to University/Collage?The textbooks are hideously expensive and a new "revision" is put out every 2-3 years with just enough minor changes & shuffling around that you cant really use a previous version to follow along with the course (hence 2nd hand copies dont last long...).Plus they cost a metric fuckton to buy.